Blogging & Social Media

I’ve been fascinated with social media since I first started chatting on ICQ back in the late 90’s! I have over 10 years commercial and personal experience with blogging and social media platforms. I am continuously exploring social media management tools and the most productive ways to manage multiple social media accounts, techniques to increase engagement and business value.

Blogging experience

Blogging has always been a way for me to keep up to date with the latest apps and platforms, explore the latest technologies and platforms and practice the disciple of writing. Here are some of my blogging highlights:

I have been blogging since 2005. My first blog about public relations and corporate communications, A Surplice of Spin, was referenced in David Meerman Scott’s globally best-selling book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR, as a result of one of my blogger outreaches.

In July 2017, I was selected from a pool of over 70 applications, to speak at WordCamp Brisbane about building my business via WordPress, WooCommerce and Facebook.

In January 2016, I re-launched an updated version of A Surplice of Spirit, after my passion for holistic therapies and natural heath was re-ignited following a change in full time roles. I currently write about crystals, chakras, mindfulness, meditation, mindset, personal development, holistic therapies, book and podcast reviews, and more.

In October 2014, I launched Highflying Marketers, a site which provides ambitious young marketers with real-world career advice, resources and tools, empowering them to build a successful career and inspired life. I plan and create all of the content on the site, and manage the associated social media accounts.

A Surplice of Spirit was my blog about holistic therapies. I launched this blog in June 2008 and kept it active until May 2009.

Launched in June 2006 and active for two years, A Surplice of Adventure was my travel blog, and chronicled my adventures as an Australian working in London.

In November 2005, I started my corporate communications blog, A Surplice of Spin. I ran it for two years before starting to focus on my travel blog.

In 2005, I planned and executed the global PR launch of Factiva Insight (now Dow Jones Insight), a media analytics platform which helps communications professionals to monitor and measure their company’s reputation across traditional print media as well as millions of websites, blogs, online chat boards, YouTube and Twitter. As well as using this platform to create the Factiva Research campaigns which generated widespread global publicity, I spent 2.5 years in media consulting and report writing roles at Dow Jones, which used this platform. I lead multilingual media analytics platform implementations in Europe and Asia Pacific, and authored numerous executive reports for clients such as KPMG, which monitored and analysed social media.

Social media experience

As well as managing my own social media accounts, I manage the Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest accounts for A Surplice of Spirit. Since launching the business in January 2016, I have built a highly engaged community of over 25,000 crystal lovers (20,000+ on Facebook and 5,000+ on Instagram). Social media traffic is driving sales of crystals, cards and mystical gifts from my Surplice of Spirit website.

In 2014 and 2012 respectively, I introduced a basic LinkedIn content publishing strategy at both TechnologyOne and GlobalX, which paved the way to both companies rolling out broader social media strategies.

I am an enthusiastic contributor to the Flickr community. My 4,000+ photos have had over 200,000 views. I have had requests from the Carl Zeiss Lens Team on Flickr to use one of my travel photos in an upcoming Zeiss marketing campaign. Another photo was used in a short film to launch the Museum of Brisbane’s 100% Brisbane exhibition.

Key blogging and social media skills

10+ years experience in designing, setting up and managing blogs, including self-hosted WordPress websites and customising themes

Strong knowledge of core WordPress plugins such as All in One WP Security, Shareaholic, WordPress SEO, W3 Total Cache, Click to Tweet, Disqus, WooCommerce